Tag: california

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If you try hard enough, helicopters can remind you of the ocean. Especially when they’re circling over you. The humming of its proximity the low rumbling of the Pacific. It’s approach, waves crashing. And as it continues on, the fizzing retreat of the surge, from shore, pulled back into the sea. 

No matter how hard you try, helicopters remind you of home. They sound the way the ocean sounds made up the wind. Even from the street where I used to live. One, perfect little street. Buckeyes and Douglas firs; silhouettes of palms stalking you from afar, hiding in the forever blanket of Maritime overcast. And June, season of the white jasmine. The town perfume. Potholes, and. Old cars, small jobs, easy people with easy prospects, just trying to live. ‘Trying.’ With said ‘small’ ‘jobs.’ And you grow up, realize the crowdedness on the main drag, on the weekends, fancy people with fancy cars, when you’re younger you imagine the rich people in town are just hiding away until the weekend comes and now that it’s here, they’re ready for fun, but then, you get older and land a gig at a coffee slash reused, paperback feminist bookshop, and they all start flooding in asking for the vegan butterscotch – cookies – and you, you let them ask you questions about where you live and how you ‘like it out there,’ and then you begin to realize that maybe, these people aren’t even from your town at all, and that, maybe your town never had any rich people to begin with. 

And that’s when they talk about visiting from LA, you know, ‘just a little R and R,’ and sure, makes sense they’re city folk; they’ve all got Amexes and dressed like they’re – dress like a stereotypical houseless person would dress (although I’m not one to speculate, not really on the outside, at least). Everything’s distressed if they come from money, looking ugly and bored – even with themselves – unless they happened to find their riches in that city, for the first time in their entire families lineage. Then they dress in their polos and chinos, groomed hair and – carry – an utmost fascination with themselves for they worked towards the ability to not only find others and other things fascinating, but to go meet those things for themselves. Again, sure, you imagine that’s what comes out of this city, and, for the most part I think I’m right – although I couldn’t tell you what the world out there looks like, or dressed like South of the 10. I never fascinated myself with that part of town. I don’t think I can be hated for not wanting to. Tee shirts probably. Sunday best? Blue collar looking to go White. Black and Brown looking to go White, too. Maybe not looking to go anywhere at all, but. I think you always hope for different people to suddenly make up all the people you already know. But the folks who came from nothing, became something? With their pretty clothes? Their emblems of right choice? I thought I could be one of those people, too.

And so you sit with yourself. On the porch on your perfect street, of the perfect little home you and your brother began renting with your dead father’s money; no word from mom. And your brother’s beginning to get mixed up, but he’s found a woman who makes him happy, sort of, but in thinking he’s all you got, him and that house, you decide – FUCK reused, paperback feminist books AND their bookshops – FUCK – fascinating over fascinators looking at you, tapping on the glass at the zoo – FUCK – the white jasmine and the shore and the air that seeps through even polyester. You look at the moon and you sit on your porch and remind yourself or convince yourself that you are worth more than whatever she made you believe; or what your brother suggests at times, what we have been reduced to. And so? I moved to LA. And I got a job working for Alamo Car Rental. Close to the runways of Burbank, the thoughts of travel were a song. I would build a world and promise of myself, capable of returning to see my brother whenever he needed me. Or whenever I had decided I wanted to see him. I would – read, and write – something, join the forces for good, neighborhood council, the People’s council, ACLU, Democrats Now, the food shelter, the regular shelters, and the shelters that give out all those identical tents seemingly for the houseless and campus protestors? I would make – a name – for myself by doing good for others, offering aid and offering Camrys, speaking up for what was right and shouting down what I disagreed with. Soon? I would make it to the big leagues, something at the mayor’s office or some other office oversaw by a, preferably, brown or black person of color who climbed the ranks through the system and has never at all ever once done something corrupt. I would be, their knight – I know coffee and books, compelling ones – I know the lay of the land, the people, the people who gawk, the people who look at me – the same way they do a person on the streets! I would soar, high and above my street of fir and buckeye and white jasmine and my brother’s BITCH girlfriend Lily Rose, I would write an autobiography of my work serving the disenfranchised while also noting my own disenfranchisement, my OWN – BITCH mother – and then soon I would have a service clinic for all women and women-identifying convicts and would liberate ALL of us! 

The dreams get bigger the more the city holds you down, begs you to beg yourself not to go. My brother’s getting into deeper trouble and I could see a world for myself where I surrender the desire of fascination and retrieve whatever world of family I have left. At Alamo, you’re giving out better cars than the one you drive. And In Los Angeles, you’re always putting out for those who don’t need a single thing. This garden ledge, my porch back home. The strangers, the fascinators, all of whom I hope to get bored by, and inspired to, soon, one day go home. It’s better than this shit. Living off sloppy seconds, the second halves of your lunches out of Popeye’s, 7-11. Coming home to cheap wine, a dirty roommate, a neighbor ingratiated with himself, and a Moon seen better through a fog. In Los Angeles, you only get to leave once something about it spits you out. And if you try hard enough, maybe something finally will. I sort of hope it does. I sometimes think I’m not cut out for dreaming as a living. 

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’bout God and
why I think of Him
and don’t believe out of want but out of need;
how He’s beauty and beauty’s
the thing I choose over the LA euthanasia, it’s –
the thing that reaches in,
embraces the thing most cold that tells us not to go
and nurtures into it like kneading
the willingness to carry on;
white jasmine tomorrow’s, cotton candy clouds
present the palm trees with their power lines,
the promise of fire, hot hot heat,
the longing champion of one’s eternity
despite the cold that tells us not to go.

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I’m laying on a lakebed 40 miles North of Barstow 
And I’m thinking about bucket hats as something you can
barf into, 
Heart strings that sting,
And the magic’s hitting like it’s hurting, feeling like a
horny Himbo 
And the sky right now I mean like Jesus fucking christ — 
A universe cathedral. 
Milky Way the arches, 
Praising something like itself and my back’s on the dirt
and there go the desert gods of aliens, winking at me and
the hand’s outreached and you come to view, at least to
mind, I wonder where you’ve been, wonder if you’d stay,
wonder if I’d keep you if you did,
wonder if the Gods up in the sky that zoom and zoom
are but tensioned boredom,
precursor of grief which befalls always at the end,
and if Gods like wistful love
are just longing, laying, pining need for you
to lift me off the ground,
then perhaps this taste piercing my throat
salivating for salvation,
knowing how I want you knowing now I need you.
that’s Venus rising to the left and just above our Moon.

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When that passing-by, retractable roof decides to protect our lovely basin once again from the seven stars above, the color of the sky turns into something a little brown. 
But with some purple to it, 

don’t you think?
It’s too bland and too basic, very
‘Show’s over, folks, grab the tarp from that end over there and will pull it over them together,’

to be something suspect to grey. 

It’s purple Brown, with

Charcoal particle,
covering our night sky and all those seven little stars, 

under lit by the amber brilliance of those ever glowing, One 34 in the morning 
streetlights, 
One 34 in the morning and all two-hundred 23,
thousand, 
sodium
street 
lights. 

(‘That’s it?’) 
Eight hundred and 6
high-rise towers in Los Angeles, 
and that includes the ones that just light up at night to convince you people are working in them. 

There’s also any of the following awake at night and driving (‘We’re thinking Blade Runner, baby’): 
Five, 
million, 
484 thousand
cars,
one hundred and twenty-three thousand, 669 motorcycles and one million, 68 thousand, 213 commercial vehicles (‘Bjork probably eats this shit up!’). 

That’s a lot of light. 

Varied light, too. 
Although there’s been no word from Bird. 
LAX, 
the purple lanterns lighting that one bit up on Riverside. 

All of it. 

Beaming upward. 

Towards that 
Tarp, that 
combination of the charcoal particle, the 
smog, the fog, all those cigarettes – the exhaust of cars, factory fumes, the coughed out black of 2-stroke lawnmowers illegal in California (I think) that turn neighborhood soundscapes into ongoing vamps of cystic sacs popping, the tar pus of them all blasting with expelled squalls of toxic gas out these hyper-active metallic sphincters of robot moose,

And the fires… 

(Remember that photo of the horsies on the sands of Malibu looking towards a blazing horizon, camels too, like Jesus Christ)

And then it all blends in with the clouds? The lot of it all, you know, just all of it combined, the pollutions, 
the light of it all, 

With the fumes and …the clouds. 

Clouds.

Clouds of which – 

Which I suppose we, hm. I see. 

‘What you could say. ‘Is.’’

Well I suppose we could, we
…could say…

I suppose we could say that the clouds in this instance are something suspect to grey. 

Sure,

The lid could have some grey to it. Fine.

By which case, in addition to another observation made moments ago, I stand corrected and renowned. ‘Renewed.’ proudly.

The error here for real, is that the sky is sometimes just the cloud. Sure.

‘Obviously(!),’
You know. ‘It’s just a cloud sometimes,’
And now, 

Here comes a single star.

Could always be a drone, who knows. 

And ah! There’s Jupiter. Could be, at least I’ll open up my app in just a beat. Looks big from where I’m sitting, there goes the cloud and here comes the sky. The sky, 

Looking like a little indigo. 
but with some green to it,

don’t you think? Huh!

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I’ve always wanted church on Sundays, though I’ve never gone,
all that

noise,

The knowing God loves you, just not enough to save you (?), you know,
all that

hoopla,

that spooks.

Though,

Sitting here, I gaze,

Knowing something else is true,
or fine.

I suppose.

The dolphins feed Northbound at 6,
‘Cue the fins,’
Knowing coasts, the mountain lines singing with the sky in stanzas, those motif connect-the-dots upon the staffs, amongst nimbus songs,
Standing, stalled silhouettes negotiating crumble always.
Laughing with them, in this chair, with the fried chicken from the Ralph’s at the Pacific Palisades, where Lizzie once wrote poems too.

Solar flares chill you into embrace and the grains of sands from faraway lands tumble as they dance and flow, into something viscous between your toes,
as he comes to mind (and rubs your shoulders too the way it felt when he held you at night and you trembled low),

(Those hands are gone now),

But there’s your dance, the beach set-up, pomp and circumstance of Sunset deconstruction, that’s kneeling at the altar, Incubator Isle’s empty and you know the water will be good come June.

As His burn sears your neck like a sober kiss,
We peel away and remember:

Body of Christ by way of the 101 to the 405,
Steadfast down Chappaqua after tapping cards at Ralph’s,
onwards towards the Pacific,
church on Sunday’s by way of Saturday,
by way of surrendering to the presences you always knew were always there,
His kingdom your pew,
vice versa, vice versa, Ad Infinitum,

and there’s a 17 minute slowdown on Sunset,
but you’re still on the fastest route.

on by

Yeah,
There is no freedom.
Not for me at least. 
Bottles of pills, the three for months,
the ones I need and sometimes skip,
in a paper bag from Kaiser crunched up 
in the glove compartment of my pick-up truck. 

Driving from the Sunsets I used to seek
the dog is sitting next to me,
Lucinda and Sharon’s strumming all for me.

Searching for my farm in Nebraska unknown,
where the job awaits 

and my man slow-dances at the bar on Tuesdays.

He forgets my name but not my drink, 
his denim’s stained, his toothpick
soaked, 
looking like he’ll hit you with his eyes, 

that’s when he cries, 

when a strong man dies, 

it’s what his daddy used to say, 

Daddy’s something he likes to say. 

He promises he’s never satisfied, 
promises he’ll fade away, 

it’s what he wants

His only want, 
the power of his certainty, 
the tears on his cowboy cheeks over the stars outside the club, 
the muffled sounds of neon crust his skin with dirt and 
the tilted hat masks his pain. 

He sets the five AM alarm to work it out, 
always working, never thinking, handiwork, 
the medicine of using hands, 
sweating blindly, parched for water so he lights a fag and drinks his milk, 
has a rocking chair that overlooks the oaks
but,
prefers the wooden steps instead, 

The ones that lead him to his farm and to his work where he works to pass the days 
and gaze 
at the nautical sky as the Sun dips beneath the plains behind him, 
in his Nebraska unknown, 
the one I found for him, 
the one that’s far from what he used to know. 

The Tuesday’s rolls around, 
those tumbleweed days into nights, 
slow-dancing at the bar like the ladies we are, 
lassoed and roped from whiskey to groped 
Daddy this and daddy that, 
safeword’s the whispers mother never shared with you 
the secrets of what you are, 
the maps of where you’re going, 
where they wanted you to go, 

And boy
were you going. 

But where you going now? 

The bottle’s running low. 
The other two are shot to hell. 
Too broke to have the farm 
but broke enough for handouts.

The ones that

That keep you in California. 
Bring you back to California. 
Trap you lost in California. 
For that 

crinkled bag, 
the three bottles for months, 

the pills you need but sometimes want to skip. 
Sure to die, but sure to ignore,
to flee with Ruffy in that pick-up truck 
and daydream of slow-dancing at the bar with what you are, 
no, what you wanted, 
knowing what you wanted but you’ll never be. 

Wanted the Nebraska unknown and tumbleweed dreams, 
blackened journal lines, line-dancing too
Something else that’s more for me,

Driving back to L.A.,
prescription filled,
every day and every time,
wanting to be free. 

on by

Fires in the sky of California and sunset in the desert’s been chased beyond the sepia void,
where mountains once screamed for the title of what’s left on our horizon.

It’s as though they’d all gone fucking mental, but now they’re gone, too, don’t you see?

They were onto something.

I never thought I was insane,
just that I allowed myself to be treated undisputedly towards and through the brink of my own,
regenerative,
nuclear
meltdown.

Keeping cool,
For now, though, thinking of when you asked me if I’d ever been to Aspen.
That helps.

Instead of separate homes, a part of me wishes we were riding towards the Gas Lite, at the end of the line,
Down on Wilshire, Karaoke Wednesdays every night,
And you’re in your board shorts and flip flops and once we’re there we spill the spells, and you

tell me there’s a secret reservoir somewhere apparently in Malibu, where
If you keep going straight down old Crags road, there’s a lake nearby made from a dam.
You say we’ll find a Left up ahead and once we take it that’s where we find our spring,
So.

After singing Kokomo (there’s PBR’s in there somewhere), we drive onward upward onto Kanan road,
And at the dead of night,
The deadest before Dawn,
We mistake the moon for the 5 PM we used to know two hours ago and suddenly my bumper’s not falling off like it used to (You’d pulled over and fixed it while I napped through the blink of an eye) and when I woke we were flying and you were talking about barnacles in Massachusetts.

There’s no longer a light to the heat but lower the window, see?
It feels like it’s still there. It now brims and breathes, but from below, the peddled ground, you feel it don’t you, it’s become what made it so?

On the way after our dip at the Century Reservoir,
You’re sure to stop for some slushees and airplane liquor to quench my lungs from the American Spirit that scorched my breath a pack ago today.
I hold your hand and you
My crotch. Your grip’s a kiss,
Mine’s
Raspberry lisps
As we’re driving onward through the Mojave,
Towards the snows of Colorado and you’re driving,
the thoughts of ski lifts
and thrusts in some hot tub keep our eyes ahead of what’s already become of us now,
In this moment here,
driving towards the fires
In the skies,

of California.